Big East football 2013

Note: West Virginia, Pitt and Syracuse might play their final season in the Big East in 2013 if they stick to league bylaws concerning withdrawal. West Virginia is trying to leave by July.

To stabilize its finances and broaden its exposure nationally, San Diego State is moving east -- to the Big East – starting in July 2013.

SDSU announced the move Wednesday, calling it a “very historic day in our history." It will be for football only, with another announcement soon to come about where SDSU will place its other sports – most likely in the Big West.

“This move is very important in the continued development of San Diego State as a national institution,” SDSU Athletic Director Jim Sterk said.

Also joining the reconstructed Big East Conference are four other new members: Boise State, Houston, Southern Methodist and Central Florida. They will be part a football league with at least 10 members in 2013, including holdovers Cincinnati, Louisville, South Florida, Rutgers and UConn.

The league eventually hopes to get to 12 members in two divisions: eastern and western. Navy and Temple are among those who might join later. Air Force on Wednesday released a statement saying it was staying in the Mountain West.

For SDSU, the move is about money. In the Mountain West, where SDSU has competed since 1999, SDSU only received about $1.5 million annually in league TV revenue. By moving to the Big East, the Aztecs estimate they could fetch $6.4 million to $10 million annually in TV rights money. Another $1.8 million could come from shared bowl revenue in a league with access to more lucrative bowl games.

“An important aspect of this is financial stabilization,” SDSU President Elliot Hirshman said. “The additional revenue helps us to stabilize and support current programs.”

SDSU had a $3.3 million deficit to pay back as recently as two years ago, Sterk said. Those financial pressures even forced the department to eliminate 25 full-time jobs. To alleviate such pressure, then-SDSU President Stephen Weber raised student fees twice since 2004, moving it from $30 to $350 annually to help raise money to support the athletic department.

SDSU’s $32 million athletics “revenues” now includes about $10 million from student fees and $5 million to $6 million from the state general fund.

Now that new money is coming in from the Big East, Hirshman was asked about rolling back fees to ease the burden on students:

“Those fees are absolutely necessary for the athletic department to function and to serve students in this entire community,” Hirshman said. “Those are not on the table as far as rolling them back in any way.”

The move comes with some costs. Sterk said there is a $2.5 million entry fee to join the Big East. He said it would be taken out of SDSU’s TV money and would be paid over five years. Travel costs in football are expected to increase by about $200,000 or more. Additionally, SDSU will have to forfeit its final year of revenue from the Mountain West – about $2.5 million – as a penalty for leaving.

But all are modest costs in comparison to what media consultants have told SDSU it could get after the Big East starts negotiating a new TV rights contract next September with ESPN.

Sterk said it would give SDSU the “resources to compete nationally.” A new TV deal also probably will give SDSU national exposure. In the Mountain West, most of the Aztecs’ games were on the league’s TV network, the Mtn., which is not available to 200,000 Time Warner Cable subscribers in San Diego County.

“We could theoretically on any given Saturday have four kickoffs that don't compete with each other,” Big East Commissioner John Marinatto said. “We think… that's a very powerful model as we move forward in our upcoming TV negotiations.”

For the Big East, the move was about survival. Three Big East members recently announced they were leaving for other conferences: West Virginia to the Big 12 and Pitt and Syracuse to the Atlantic Coast. That left the Big East with just five football members – not enough to survive. To fortify its ranks, the league first targeted new western members such as Boise, Air Force and Brigham Young. But after talks with BYU broke down about two weeks ago, the Big East began serious discussions with SDSU.

The idea behind expanding south and west is to add big TV markets. The more viewers and television sets a league has in its realm, the more money it can command from a TV network in a contract negotiation. San Diego, Dallas, Houston and Orlando are ranked among the nation’s top 28 TV markets with more than 1 million TV households each.

“With these five new members, our conference will continue to have, by far, the single largest media footprint in intercollegiate athletics,” Marinatto said.

A question going forward for the league is stability. If more football members leave, such as UConn or Louisville, where does that leave the new members?

To prevent that from happening, the Big East recently raised the exit fee for current football members to $10 million. Hirshman also said that bringing in five new members at once gives the league much stronger stability.

UCF, Houston and SMU will join for all sports. Boise State and SDSU will be for football only. Hirshman said it was a “mutual decision” not to play other sports in the Big East because of travel burdens and costs.

Instead, SDSU will have to play its other sports in another league, likely the Big West. Another possibility is the Western Athletic Conference. The Big West might be a drop down in competition for SDSU men’s basketball, but its exposure could increase there too because the league has a contract with ESPN and Fox Sports.

As part of the football deal, the Aztecs also have been assured of about two home-and-home men’s basketball games per year with Big East teams, possibly marquee teams such as Louisville and UConn.

“Football is the one intercollegiate sport you can take national,” Sterk said, explaining why the Big East move was football only.

Just don’t expect SDSU’s new football league to get a new national name.

“We have not contemplated changing the name of the Big East Conference,” Marinatto said. “If a conference called the Big Ten can have 12 schools, a conference called the Big East can have schools that are not necessarily in the east.”